January 8, 2024 • 50 mins
Penelope Camarata, a Therapeutic Trauma Life Coach and former First Responder in Philadelphia, supports Frontline Heroes nationwide. Her journey began after moving to Philadelphia with her children following a divorce. Motivated by the loss of a close friend, a Police Lieutenant, to suicide, she helps others overcome trauma and its challenges, offering crucial support to those on the frontlines.
How does trauma affect the daily lives of people in the first line? How does it affect families, and what are valuable tips on managing reactions to traumatic events in their work? How can families support first responders to decrease the effect on family life?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:14):
So welcome to our new episode of the podcast, Way Out
of Childhood Trauma and all types of traumas we have
in the life and how we deal with them.
Today I have an amazing guest, who is
Penelope Camarata, which is Terapeut from Pennsylvania.
But her background is that she is
(00:35):
EMT and helping people in the first line.
So I think that especially after COVID, we have become even
more appreciate people in the first line and what everything
they have to endure and how it's affecting them.
So welcome Penelope in our podcast and tell me,
(00:57):
how did you thank you for having me.
You must welcome.
So tell us, how did you get to that
you choose to be EMT and how it's affected
life and your choices now what are you doing?
(01:19):
I've been in and around the medical
field, first responders all my life.
My uncle was an EMT, and then he
went into the sheriff's department and I never
kind of understood why he wanted the other
because they're kind of opposite of each other.
(01:39):
But I grew up with a brittle diabetic mom,
so we always had diabetic emergencies happening at home.
So I've seen EMS a lot growing up.
And my uncle actually had to take
her on a lifelike to a larger
hospital during one of her diabetic emergencies.
(01:59):
And after that, that's when he switched
roles from EMS to law enforcement.
And I never understood why he did that.
And he was always very
overprotective of his little sister.
He was older than her, but he was very overprotective.
And it never clicked with me why nobody ever
really talked about it back in the I'm dating
(02:21):
myself when I say the 80s growing up.
So when I became a mom, my middle
child, 14, was diagnosed with type one diabetes
dependent diabetic every other generation and old.
So dealing with it as a child now I'm
(02:42):
dealing with it as a mom of a child.
That's diabetic had a whole new dynamic outlook
on how I have to handle this, how
I have to basically work around it, because
there's not something that you can schedule in.
It's not something that's like an occasional thing.
This is a lifelong illness
(03:05):
that changes dramatically a lot.
She went through a lot of different things.
Even at 14, after she was first diagnosed,
within a year, she had to have eye
surgery because she had cataracts on both eyes.
And that's very rapid for a
diabetic, especially a young have.
(03:27):
So that was pretty severe.
And for her to have trauma was a big
deal because she's trying to adjust the this isn't
going to go away, the chronic thing.
And now she's got to have surgery on her
eyes and now she's perceiving herself as being different.
(03:51):
The parent dynamic is different because now I have to try
to work with her through these homes that she's having and
try to be mom but at the same time be professional
in the sense of let's get to the fact here, we
(04:13):
have to separate that emotion from the logic.
So at that point, it's a struggle.
And it was a struggle balancing out
with two other kids as well.
So it was a challenge in itself,
but it was a learning experience.
And it was a great learning experience, really, because
(04:34):
I got to see it from a new perspective.
And technology had kind of advanced at that point, too.
And then I ended up moving to Philadelphia.
It's been eleven years now
since I've moved to Philadelphia.
And I was actually going to go into law enforcement
(04:54):
as a Philly cop and knew a great cop here
in Philadelphia and was all set to do that.
And personal dynamics changed.
Everything kind of shifted and ended
up going into EMS instead.
So it was kind of weird how I went
from law enforcement like my uncle and now I'm
(05:16):
going into EMS like the same uncle, only backwards.
So it was kind of different.
But I kind of got to understand why
he chose what he chose and stuff.
And at that same time, what shifted me was
the fact that the friend that I knew coming
into Philadelphia, this one person out of 5 million
(05:38):
people, he was lieutenant with the police department and
he took his own life unexpectedly.
And it hit me really hard because I found out about
it two days before I took my state test for EMS.
(05:59):
So I had to figure out how to put that
on the back burner, so to speak, and focus on
getting through my testing because I'd already busted my reader
for three months and I wasn't going to lose that.
And I couldn't afford to lose that and go backwards.
And it's not something I wanted to fail at.
(06:19):
And the hardest part about that was finding out that
he had died on my youngest daughter's 17th birthday.
So that was kind of like a double whammy.
And then getting into my EMS
career, I was going full force.
I was focusing on that.
And I still had this little thing on
(06:41):
this back burner over here, quietly eating away
at me without me realising it.
And three years later, it hits me that
I am now in a deep depression.
I am having a hard time functioning.
I don't want to be around people.
I am turning into the exact
(07:02):
opposite of what I normally am.
And watching people just around me and hearing
conversations, I started realising that, doing my own
self assessment, that I'm spiralling down that dream,
that Dante's hell of self destruction.
(07:26):
And it's a silence destruction.
No one's asking me if I'm okay.
There's no wellness cheque and no one's
taking the time to notice there's something
different or something has changed.
Because we get so wrapped up in our own
little world, we forget there's other people around.
Even as first responders, we do that.
(07:49):
So I started looking for ways to help myself
because I had seriously thought about taking my own.
I had spiralled down that far through my grief, but
in that grief I had found niches that were actually
helpful and I didn't realise it at the time.
(08:10):
Art therapy was one, blogging was another.
Normally I hate writing in a journal, I'm not
very consistent with it, but a friend of mine
suggested blogging about my tattoos on my arm that
I have slowly been getting and the purpose behind
them because they're very significant.
(08:31):
Each one had a story behind it that I
didn't realise, but it was part of my grieving.
So I was using actually my tattoos as
my art therapy and that was actually helping.
It was getting the next level to
the next day to the next month.
(08:53):
But I was still down in that hole and started
looking for therapists or counsellor, someone to talk to.
And there is nothing out there for first responders.
They say that they work with anybody, but
when you say you're a first responder, first
(09:14):
of all, they don't know how to react.
They don't know the questions asked, they're stumped on
WhatsApp and they basically treat a first responder or
a veteran, just like your person out on the
street is having loss of a spouse or something.
And it's totally different, the mindset is different.
(09:38):
We're so type A personality that we think differently, we
process things differently, we see things differently because people at
their worst day and we get screamed at for getting
a ticket, for someone getting a ticket.
We get yelled at because the road is blocked
(10:00):
because of an accident and they're late on something.
It's never about, hey, is everybody okay?
I have things I have to do and you're in my way.
It's the death of somebody that
is either unexplained or unexpected.
It never should have happened.
Freak accidents that there's no reason for a lot of
(10:26):
this stuff, there's no explanation as to why it happens,
but we always ask that question as to why.
What could possibly motivate someone
to do this crazy stuff?
And a lot of times there's no answers.
And then when you try to find a counsellor that
help you process that, they have no answers for you.
That's what you're looking for.
(10:46):
And it's not necessarily that you're looking for
the answers, it's that we're looking for, I
guess, recognition and validation of our feelings.
Because paramedical organisations are taught to
be tough, show no weakness.
You're only as strong as your weakest link.
(11:07):
If you have a mental health
issue, then I can't trust you.
Trust comes into it, level of
confidence from your coworkers goes down.
You can even classify bullying, shaming in
part of that because of all the
(11:29):
stigmas that are associated with paramilitary organisation.
And so when I started going through these different
the art journaling, the tattooing, I started with Reiki
and found out that I enjoyed it.
I actually have a natural knack for it
and it was something that I didn't think
(11:52):
was actually working because it wasn't tangible.
And then I realised it was because I felt better afterwards,
I had more energy and then I wanted to share with
everybody and everybody that I work is first who I focused
on and these guys I don't understand what Renegy is, it's
(12:16):
just too weird because I can't touch it.
To me, it doesn't exist.
They cannot be linked to massage therapy
more than they can to reiki.
Just because you can't see it or touch
it doesn't mean it doesn't work or exist.
So I would experiment on them, I
would use them as my guinea pig.
Let me give you a reiki session
(12:37):
and see how you feel afterwards.
Just keep an open mind on it.
And when I did that, they actually
felt better and they couldn't understand why.
And it's just that shift in energy is just because we
can't see it or feel it doesn't mean it's not there.
It doesn't have an impact on it.
(12:58):
It does, it has a huge impact on we have energy
all around us from everything that we own has energy.
Whether it's good or bad, that's totally up to what
you transmit out to it, because if it's positive energy,
you're going to get a good feeling about it.
(13:19):
If it's a bad energy or if you instantly
don't like a person or you feel on guard
with them, well, there's a reason why they have
that negative energy and it's always on the spot.
You cannot argue with that because there's
nothing guarding it or controlling it, basically.
(13:40):
And so what I found working with the
Reiki and with sound therapy, breath work, integrating
that into my programme for my clients has
made a huge difference on them accepting what
(14:02):
they're working, they're able to actually work.
Do the breath work and the open mindedness,
the flow from a third person perspective better
because they can distance themselves and still feel
safe and still have that outlook of I
(14:24):
can see it from a different perspective.
One, because I'm older, more mature, and second, because
nothing can hurt me, I'm just the observer.
And when you tell people that they're just
the observer in an observation mode, they don't
feel threatened because they're not physically reliving.
(14:45):
Yeah, absolutely.
That's what a lot of the trauma is.
And it's hard for people to say that I can't
heal from trauma because they presume to think that.
And a lot of practitioners put them into a
(15:09):
state where they have to relive that trauma.
And that is the hardest thing for especially a perfect
spawn, because it's like living in a nightmare and you're
the hamster on that wheel, you're just spinning around, you're
not going anywhere, you're not doing thing, you start to
(15:31):
relive it over again and it doesn't stop.
And so when a lot of people will ask first
responders, well, what was your worst day on the job.
Don't say that to people.
I swear that is like a comment that really should
be outlawed because it sets off so much emotions and
(15:57):
people have actually regressed from progress, either through denial or
whatever, recovered from addiction, but people will get asked that
question and they revert right back into that old negative
way and you just lost ground.
(16:17):
Hopefully you haven't lost too much ground,
but you have to regain it.
So that makes it even more difficult.
And then they're like, well, I don't want to
try again because all I do is I relive
this and they don't want to try me.
And that's a big struggle, trying to get
that trust back for them to go through
(16:37):
it again, but to fix it this time.
And that's what I help people do.
That's really amazing.
I'm really interesting listening to your
story and how you're helping people.
And for me, it's very aligning
with how I am helping people.
(16:59):
Because I don't believe that we
need to release our trauma.
We just need to recover from it.
We just need to release that energy, release that
all the emotions, all that what we hold in.
And I can understand how first condors are so
used to just hold it all in and just
like it's going on them as the slate.
When people are acting, as you describe, beautifully, like
(17:22):
not what we would actually expect, like that they
are helpful, but often they are even under attack.
So that's great.
So tell me, what do you see as this most
common, I would say like manifestation, how you would see
that people, how the people could recognise that they struggle.
(17:43):
What do you tell people?
What they should look for symptoms to recognise as
somebody who is first responder or in military or
that struggling, that they just kind of trying to
cover it up a lot of times.
And I've actually done a couple of podcasts on PTSD
(18:08):
and understanding the complexities of it, what causes it.
We all have triggers, behaviours change, recognising
the signs is the hardest part.
It's not really the hardest part.
That's actually easy because I've talked to law
(18:29):
enforcement officers who have Hobies, did all, had
all these great friends, did a lot of
things, was active out in the community and
suddenly they're losing interest in their Hobies.
They haven't done fly fishing or in a long time.
They can't remember the last time they made one.
(18:49):
They know that when they come home, they plop
in the armchair and in front of the TV
and oh, now is what they call it.
They know that they have these
it's more like lapses of interest.
They know that when they go out at the end
(19:11):
of a shift, a lot of firefighters, the first place
they hit is they hit the bar and they hit
the bar with their coworkers because that's like their family.
That basically is the family they go out and they
socialise with the family to decompress and they know that,
(19:33):
yeah, I drink after my shift to relax because when
I go home, I have nothing but chaos at home.
I really struggle with that mindset from first responders
because I have a friend who blessed his heart.
(19:54):
He started out as a medic, went to firefighting, and due
to injuries, he's now a driver for a battalion chief.
So he's like my classic example of someone
that I fully disagree with on how he's
dealing with it is that the social drinker,
he hangs out with his buddies after work.
(20:14):
He hangs out with his buddies on
his day off and they drink.
They go out and do things because when he comes home,
he says it's nothing but a craft storm at home.
The wife is pissed off, the kids doing their
own thing, the kids are old enough to where
they don't need to be watched 24/7.
But he comes home to a family
(20:35):
dynamic of tail or what he considers.
Now part of that is he dissociates himself from that
by going the basement and hiding, or he does all
the housework because the house is a total disaster.
When he's been off and on duty for four days
(20:55):
straight, he works two days and then he works two
nights and then sometimes he pulls a double in there.
So when he comes home after four days, the house
is in chaos and he's got four days off.
Well, he's the type of personality that
he wants to like a messy place.
So he goes on this cleaning and then
(21:17):
the entire time that he's cleaning, he's pissed
off, so he goes out and grooms afterwards.
So it's a vicious cycle of true, there's chaos at
home, but if the family dynamic feels that they're not
being integrated or involved in that first responder's life, there
(21:41):
is going to be what seems like chaos because they
don't know how to relate to this person.
And granted, there are some spouses out there and
significant others out there that are very non supportive
and all they want is the paycheck coming in.
But a lot of times, and I've gotten this
from family members, when they come home, they take
(22:05):
off that uniform, but they're still a cop or
they're still an Em, they're still in that zone.
They can't turn it off and we can't.
We don't work a nine to five job Monday through Friday or
five days a week where we punch in and punch out and
we can leave the stress at work and go home.
(22:25):
And it doesn't work that way
for first responders and military.
We're on call pretty much 24/7.
So we can't just flip that switch and think that
the drive from work to home is going to decompress
us with some relaxing music and we're good to go.
For the family dynamic thing and the busy schedules
(22:48):
that are at home, it doesn't work like that.
We have to have that solitude.
But unfortunately that solitude can get us into a bind as
well because we start to enjoy it too much and we
don't want to socialise outside of work, we don't want to
hang out with the neighbours because they're annoying.
(23:09):
We don't want a people anymore.
And it's frustrating because you lose interest in your
Hobies, your favourite weekend activities because you're on a
rotating schedule or shift your body gets mixed up
with all the different changes like that and so
(23:32):
therefore mentally and emotionally you can't catch up.
You're always playing that catch up game
and you never catch up to what
the physical demands are asking of you.
And so what I found is that working with people
(23:54):
and finding out their Hobies and their interests of what
they like to do, what their interests are I try
to integrate something of that into their programme.
That customised for them because that way it sparks the
interest back into what they used to like to do.
(24:16):
It's going to help them open up more
to feel safe because it's always been a
great activity, it's always been a relaxing activity.
It's something that they can relate good memories to.
And once you have that relation of good memories and
positivity, it opens them up to where they're more able
(24:37):
to want to work on the bad stuff.
Because they want those good memories
to start coming in more often.
Because it's that endorphin of good feelings.
And they miss that once they get a
taste of that endorphin of good endorphins, they
want more without the synthetic, I guess.
(25:02):
The synthetic resources.
But the tough part is getting them to acknowledge that
yeah, it's okay to like your hobbies, it's okay to
have Hobies, it's okay to open up and that's the
biggest part is getting them to feel safe enough.
Open up.
(25:22):
So what would be your advice to
for example families if one of the
members is in this first responder services?
How the family can better accommodate or what
(25:43):
is some useful advice you're giving your clients?
Like how to unload it, how to get it
to that routine of keeping that mental health fine
and how the family can support them.
One thing I've learned with family dynamics
is they need their own support group.
(26:04):
They need to be able to vent their frustrations
out in that support group where they're not venting
it out on their first responder family member.
Because the intention may be that we're caring and
that they want to help and they want to
listen but the way they come across can be
(26:30):
sometimes accusatory or argumentative or basically aggressive.
We get enough of that on the job.
We can't hand we want to switch off in
order for us to be able to do that.
(26:51):
Sometimes it's easier to have the family members and
the significant others have their own support group where
they can learn those tricks of the trade.
If dad's a cop, he's not going to want to listen
to a bunch of loud songs when he comes home.
Granted, the family doesn't have to walk on old shelf,
(27:14):
but let him have his hour of peace and maybe
set up a schedule with that first responder of okay,
you know what, I know you've had a rough day.
I know you don't.
They don't want to bring the job home with them.
They don't want to talk about their
bad days, which I can understand.
Sometimes though, you got to let them and
(27:35):
the first responder has to then letting them
in on what kind of day you've had
opens that communication of understanding too.
Because shutting out the family members that are
not first responders or military and it's almost
(27:56):
kind of like an identity thing because they
feel like they're not important to be included.
Part of a relationship is even in the marriage
vows it says for better or for worse.
Okay, you don't want to share your worst day with me.
Well that's part of that marriage vow.
That's part of standing by your partner.
(28:17):
That's part of even if you're living with
someone, that's part of that relationship 100%.
Let me carry that extra weight for you until you are
100% so that we can do this together at 100%.
It's not a 50 50 thing.
Relationships never are.
(28:39):
Even with your own children.
It's not a 50 50 thing.
It's 100% from both people, from everybody.
If someone can't carry that load of 100% and sometimes
you need someone else to help you let them.
But it's a communication where sometimes
(28:59):
it's a family counselling thing.
If it involves family dynamics of maybe setting together, shutting
down with them and saying, okay, let's work out a
plan of how do we communicate and work together.
Cohesively without one person either feeling left out or one
(29:20):
person feeling like they're being put through the interrogation room,
but at the same time they're given their space because
we need that after a long day.
I know after a long twelve
hour shift, I'm done peopleing.
I actually come home, I don't want to talk to anybody.
I'm cranky, I'm irritated and I
(29:42):
just want some peace and quiet.
Which is ironic because you may have a peaceful
day at work, but it's still mentally, you need
to be controlled and have that silence.
One thing that I have suggested for first responders is
when they come home, go take a shower, go take
(30:03):
a hot shower and imagine that shower washing away all
that negativity from your job, from your day, from whatever.
And imagine the water just washing it
away and shoving it down that drain.
And once you kind of mentally picture all the
(30:25):
crap going down the drain, it may take about
20 minutes, feel better, and I've done it myself.
I get stressed out, I get cranky, I snap
at my roommate, I go take a shower.
20 minutes later, I'm in a better frame of all that
stress has worked down the drain is how I picture it.
(30:47):
And it should be a requirement.
You don't talk to people first as long as for
at least an hour when they get home, let them
go take a shower, chill out in the shower, let
them lay down, get off their feet.
They've probably been on their feet all day.
And then say, hey, you know what?
How was your day?
Start off a general conversation.
(31:10):
Include them in activities.
And that's also part of it, is
that families shouldn't have to put their
lives on hold for their first responder. Yeah.
And a lot of them don't.
But a lot of them sometimes also have hard times,
including them back into those Family Dynamics Together group because
(31:33):
they're so used to their family members being gone, they
forget that, oh, wow, it's your day off. I forgot.
My bad.
So it's an awareness.
It's communication.
It's a lot of different things that we
assume and kind of take for granted because
we get so much into a routine that
(31:56):
we forget about things that pop up unexpectedly.
Having a support group for the spouses, their
family members, and one for the first responders,
and then one together as a group or
as, like, coming together as a family.
Just having that almost like a
(32:18):
strategy session when you come together.
Not a venting session, just a strategy session
of how can we make this work?
Because first responders and military seem to have the
highest amount of divorces no, I can imagine. Yeah.
And abusive relationships.
So it's like, okay, well, now that we've identified two issues
(32:42):
of problems, let's get down to the root cause of it
and try to find a workable solution that everybody comes out
a winner on this and nobody's left out.
There's no blame game going on, and if
we can't mess together like that mudball, okay,
then I guess you call it quit.
(33:03):
But we haven't tried every dynamic
before we've called it quit.
I think too many people are quick to
end it before trying to work things out.
Like back in the 50s, my
grandparents, bless their hearts, they disagreed.
They had the separate web type thing from the if.
(33:27):
They argued, they argued privately, but they worked it
out, and they stayed together through thick and thin.
And my father was back for me.
He had his own issues from that, and my grandmother put
up with a lot from him, but she wasn't willing to
(33:50):
walk away from him because he was an idiot.
He stuck by him until he died, and she
swore she'd never get married after that, though.
And then three years later, she suddenly got married.
He was the love of her life.
It was the second romance, and
(34:12):
he treated her like the queen.
And when they actually passed away from Alzheimer's and she
died a week later, from a broken, broken heart.
It was like, wow, things like this can happen.
This is how marriages are supposed to be.
Instead of we have a little bit
of rough water here and okay, we're
(34:32):
done, see you later, there's other solutions.
I see that it really can sometimes hard to find the
balance and I see it from how you describe it.
It's about that find that balance.
Because I work a lot of with, I would say
the children of the first responders now, adults, of course,
(34:54):
but from military families, for example, and they were so
severely affected by trauma responses of their fathers or mothers,
by the lack of their presence, by that priorities always
on them, never on me.
There is never time.
When they came up, they just snapping, they
(35:15):
never came to my game, never show attention.
Always I am always something like hunger on
the priority because what are they doing?
It's more important than my life.
So I kind of see it a lot from other perspectives.
So this is so interesting because I
believe that it's about healing all families.
(35:39):
Everybody have their own trauma or own things to
deal with and especially in this, the roles are
important, but on other side, as you said, they
shouldn't become excuse for treating the family in the
way that family is not important.
So it's finding about defining the balance
(36:00):
and finding the space for each.
And communication is definitely key.
So if somebody wants to work with you, it's a first
responder or know somebody, or it's maybe family member and would
be interested to know how can we help somebody, how long
(36:21):
your programme takes or what they could expect and how they
will find you, how they can contact you.
Well, first of all, all
my programmes were customizable.
My shortest programme, let's see, it was one month.
I did two sessions with a veteran on going
(36:45):
back through his childhood traumas and mentally giving him
his younger self a safe haven and actually worked
through his promise on his own.
We had the initial consultation, which
is 20 minutes, and it's free.
(37:07):
And then he worked with me twice
and picked the guided meditation up immediately.
Knew exactly how to focus it, how to work through it,
because once he was told that he's in a safe place,
he's just watching this past trauma as an observer.
(37:31):
It clicked with him that oh,
okay, so I'm not reliving this.
I'm just watching it like a movie.
And then I worked with him on taking steps, talk
to his younger self and finding that safe haven.
Because as children, we always look for someone to
(37:53):
be our safe haven, to take us to safety,
to be there for us to have our back.
And if that person is not available, where do we go?
And a lot of times that's when we
tend to hide in closets, hide under the
bed, run to the friend's house trying.
To find that sanctuary place.
(38:15):
And so what I did is I worked with him
on finding a way to have a conversation with his
younger self on what the problem was, who his safe
person was, why were they not available.
And then he take it upon his adult self
(38:35):
to take that child to a safe place.
So he was kind of working kind of like in a
time warp of I'm going to help at this point.
And that's why he went into the military
was because of a lot of childhood problems,
because he never felt safe at home.
And that's why a lot of children go into the military
(38:59):
at a young age, is that they have a sucky childhood.
No one has a perfect childhood, I've noticed that.
And if they say they do, that's their perception.
But a lot of the military personnel are children
who have been deeply traumatised and they're trying to
(39:20):
find a connection to something and stability.
The military offers that.
It's just that regiment of orders.
You have breakfast at this time, you have PT
at this time, you have inspection at this time.
So it's a routine that's constant and consistent
because it may not have been something they
ever had and that's what they're looking for.
(39:42):
But then when they become a civilian, they're lost
again because no one's telling them what to do. Exactly.
They can't get out of that military mindset, but they
don't understand how to integrate with regular people either because
all they've dealt with is parents telling them what to
do, the military telling them what to do, and now
(40:03):
they have to think on their own. Oh, my God.
What am I doing? They're lost.
They're totally lost.
They have an identity cris, basically.
So taking him back there, he actually worked through all
of his childhood trauma, clear up into his adulthood.
And we had a follow up at the end of the
30 days and he was off and running, set to go.
(40:26):
I worked with him on a couple of relationship
things and honestly he's doing good because I haven't
heard best results isn't when I have a client.
When I work with clients, I don't want them long term.
(40:51):
Client has been two years.
It actually took two years to finally get her
to feel safe enough to go back to her,
not her childhood trauma, but to an adult trauma
that she faced that actually caused her anxiety, that
caused her to lose her job as an EMP.
So it took her two years to finally open up
(41:13):
to me about that situation enough to where I could
kind of piece together what was going on.
And this is talking to this woman once every
two weeks, about 3 hours at a time.
That's how long it took.
Okay, so I was able to piece enough of the past,
(41:34):
of her issue without actually going into names or details.
And I walked through a session of taking her back
to that moment and watching it as an observer.
We actually had to do it into two segments
because she started getting a panic attack from it.
And so we took about a three week break and
(41:57):
then we went back and we did it again and
this time she got through the whole thing.
She was feeling a little anxious afterwards and
I gave her just some thoughts and affirmations
to ponder on in music to listen to.
And without realising it had clicked with her enough
(42:21):
that about a month or so later, she went
back to Maine for a family visit, went through
that town, didn't have a problem, was visiting with
her family, and they actually had a conversation about
that incident that her family knew nothing about.
And then she realised that she had not only
(42:42):
told them everything about this incident that had caused
her so much trauma, but she was not having
an anxiety attack from it, from talking about it,
and she was like she was floored.
Now I hear from her about once every other month
just as a cheque in to see how she's doing.
(43:03):
And I'm like, well, it took two years, but that
was at her because of her anxiety and her stressors
and the crush and a lot of things.
So most of my programmes are very short.
I'm not like most therapists, I don't
(43:24):
want to see patients for years.
No, I'm saying I believe that we're supposed to
make them better and be happy that they're living.
So my programmes are usually
between three months to six.
But if somebody have really severe symptoms,
(43:45):
my longest one is a year.
And that's only because it's PTSD.
And it's literally a twelve step programme where each
month on something new to get them to that
point of saying okay, I've actually worked through my
PTSD because that is a little bit more different.
(44:07):
Because not only are there more triggers, a lot of
the triggers happen in adulthood and the issues happen in
adulthood, so therefore they have to process them or they
have to process less, but at the same time process
more of what they haven't been processing.
(44:29):
So you have to rewire their thinking.
So that takes a little bit more in depth.
But that is my longest programme.
But most of my programmes are 30 days.
Because it's not to sound crap,
but it's like a no brainer.
(44:50):
Once you find the root of the problem or the root of
the issue, then it's easy to figure out how to fix it.
It's not us fixing it, it's them
fixing it that is the challenge sometimes.
Because they're there because I don't know what to do.
(45:11):
Okay, well, here's the step.
I don't want to do that.
Okay, you got to work with me on this.
I can't fix them, I can't heal them.
They can only heal themselves and we can give
them the tools and that's the biggest thing is
getting their confidence up enough in themselves so that
(45:33):
they know that they can heal themselves.
We're just guiding them to find the right
direction that's going to work for them, basically.
And it's a trust issue in themselves,
more so than in that's great.
So how people can contact you if they will want to
(45:55):
question if you would work with them or if they have
questions if they will be right fit for the best place
to schedule a free consultation is on Healacheal Me.
And you can look me
up under Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
I'm the only first responder
(46:16):
wellness life coach on there.
But you have to put in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as
the location for me to possibly you can schedule
the free 20 minutes consultation there for free.
And then basically it's almost like a little interview,
informal interview type thing to see if we're going
(46:38):
to be a good fit or not.
Some of them, it's not going to work.
And then I'm on Facebook with internal consciousness.
I'm also on Instagram, Twitter and
LinkedIn, always the same name.
Internal consciousness on Twitter is EMS Fitness three two
(46:59):
three is where that one is located at.
And my Facebook has my website and my
email as well as my phone number.
They can always contact me through any of those venues.
My web page is http
(47:20):
internal I-N-T-E-R-N-A lconsciousness UENI web.
That's amazing.
I will put also to the description of episode,
the ways how people can contact you if they
listen to us and would like to contact you.
(47:40):
So thank you very much for coming to
our podcast way out of childhood trauma.
I think that it was so amazing to hear from
point of view of people who are very to some
level, sometimes more sown as the causes of trauma of
others, for example, in childhood trauma when he's speaking.
(48:04):
So it was really amazing to see it from
the point of view of first responder and what
families can do, that balance can be found and
that they can be helped to cope with that.
And we're doing these very important jobs we're doing.
If it's the protecting, if it's the MNT
(48:26):
is so important, is it like we need
ambulances going around and saving people?
I'm grateful because I had the car accident and without Mt
coming to the place, I would not be here today.
So I see it as very important role and it's
(48:47):
great that it's now available support specifically for these roles
and I hope that more people will take up this.
Your message will spread and
more people will realise that.
They don't have to suffer by themselves, that they
don't have to keep it all in and carry
(49:09):
on until they break down, but that they can
have balanced life also, even when they're doing this
very demanding but very important job.
Thank you for having me.
That's my biggest thing is we
(49:29):
don't have to suffer alone.
And trying to get rid of the stigmas
is the biggest goal, because those stigmas about
our mental health and wellness worms are detrimental
to everyone's health, because if you don't have
mentally well and emotionally well, first responders, they
(49:52):
can't be out there helping other people.
And the stigmas about mental health, is it sickness
or anything like that, it needs to be erased.
Absolutely agree. Yeah.
Why we are here.
So thank you very much for
coming, and have a beautiful day.
Bye. All right. Thank you. Good luck. Bye.
So welcome to our new episode of the podcast, Way Out
of Childhood Trauma and all types of traumas we have
in the life and how we deal with them.
Today I have an amazing guest, who is
Penelope Camarata, which is Terapeut from Pennsylvania.
But her background is that she is
(00:35):
EMT and helping people in the first line.
So I think that especially after COVID, we have become even
more appreciate people in the first line and what everything
they have to endure and how it's affecting them.
So welcome Penelope in our podcast and tell me,
(00:57):
how did you thank you for having me.
You must welcome.
So tell us, how did you get to that
you choose to be EMT and how it's affected
life and your choices now what are you doing?
(01:19):
I've been in and around the medical
field, first responders all my life.
My uncle was an EMT, and then he
went into the sheriff's department and I never
kind of understood why he wanted the other
because they're kind of opposite of each other.
(01:39):
But I grew up with a brittle diabetic mom,
so we always had diabetic emergencies happening at home.
So I've seen EMS a lot growing up.
And my uncle actually had to take
her on a lifelike to a larger
hospital during one of her diabetic emergencies.
(01:59):
And after that, that's when he switched
roles from EMS to law enforcement.
And I never understood why he did that.
And he was always very
overprotective of his little sister.
He was older than her, but he was very overprotective.
And it never clicked with me why nobody ever
really talked about it back in the I'm dating
(02:21):
myself when I say the 80s growing up.
So when I became a mom, my middle
child, 14, was diagnosed with type one diabetes
dependent diabetic every other generation and old.
So dealing with it as a child now I'm
(02:42):
dealing with it as a mom of a child.
That's diabetic had a whole new dynamic outlook
on how I have to handle this, how
I have to basically work around it, because
there's not something that you can schedule in.
It's not something that's like an occasional thing.
This is a lifelong illness
(03:05):
that changes dramatically a lot.
She went through a lot of different things.
Even at 14, after she was first diagnosed,
within a year, she had to have eye
surgery because she had cataracts on both eyes.
And that's very rapid for a
diabetic, especially a young have.
(03:27):
So that was pretty severe.
And for her to have trauma was a big
deal because she's trying to adjust the this isn't
going to go away, the chronic thing.
And now she's got to have surgery on her
eyes and now she's perceiving herself as being different.
(03:51):
The parent dynamic is different because now I have to try
to work with her through these homes that she's having and
try to be mom but at the same time be professional
in the sense of let's get to the fact here, we
(04:13):
have to separate that emotion from the logic.
So at that point, it's a struggle.
And it was a struggle balancing out
with two other kids as well.
So it was a challenge in itself,
but it was a learning experience.
And it was a great learning experience, really, because
(04:34):
I got to see it from a new perspective.
And technology had kind of advanced at that point, too.
And then I ended up moving to Philadelphia.
It's been eleven years now
since I've moved to Philadelphia.
And I was actually going to go into law enforcement
(04:54):
as a Philly cop and knew a great cop here
in Philadelphia and was all set to do that.
And personal dynamics changed.
Everything kind of shifted and ended
up going into EMS instead.
So it was kind of weird how I went
from law enforcement like my uncle and now I'm
(05:16):
going into EMS like the same uncle, only backwards.
So it was kind of different.
But I kind of got to understand why
he chose what he chose and stuff.
And at that same time, what shifted me was
the fact that the friend that I knew coming
into Philadelphia, this one person out of 5 million
(05:38):
people, he was lieutenant with the police department and
he took his own life unexpectedly.
And it hit me really hard because I found out about
it two days before I took my state test for EMS.
(05:59):
So I had to figure out how to put that
on the back burner, so to speak, and focus on
getting through my testing because I'd already busted my reader
for three months and I wasn't going to lose that.
And I couldn't afford to lose that and go backwards.
And it's not something I wanted to fail at.
(06:19):
And the hardest part about that was finding out that
he had died on my youngest daughter's 17th birthday.
So that was kind of like a double whammy.
And then getting into my EMS
career, I was going full force.
I was focusing on that.
And I still had this little thing on
(06:41):
this back burner over here, quietly eating away
at me without me realising it.
And three years later, it hits me that
I am now in a deep depression.
I am having a hard time functioning.
I don't want to be around people.
I am turning into the exact
(07:02):
opposite of what I normally am.
And watching people just around me and hearing
conversations, I started realising that, doing my own
self assessment, that I'm spiralling down that dream,
that Dante's hell of self destruction.
(07:26):
And it's a silence destruction.
No one's asking me if I'm okay.
There's no wellness cheque and no one's
taking the time to notice there's something
different or something has changed.
Because we get so wrapped up in our own
little world, we forget there's other people around.
Even as first responders, we do that.
(07:49):
So I started looking for ways to help myself
because I had seriously thought about taking my own.
I had spiralled down that far through my grief, but
in that grief I had found niches that were actually
helpful and I didn't realise it at the time.
(08:10):
Art therapy was one, blogging was another.
Normally I hate writing in a journal, I'm not
very consistent with it, but a friend of mine
suggested blogging about my tattoos on my arm that
I have slowly been getting and the purpose behind
them because they're very significant.
(08:31):
Each one had a story behind it that I
didn't realise, but it was part of my grieving.
So I was using actually my tattoos as
my art therapy and that was actually helping.
It was getting the next level to
the next day to the next month.
(08:53):
But I was still down in that hole and started
looking for therapists or counsellor, someone to talk to.
And there is nothing out there for first responders.
They say that they work with anybody, but
when you say you're a first responder, first
(09:14):
of all, they don't know how to react.
They don't know the questions asked, they're stumped on
WhatsApp and they basically treat a first responder or
a veteran, just like your person out on the
street is having loss of a spouse or something.
And it's totally different, the mindset is different.
(09:38):
We're so type A personality that we think differently, we
process things differently, we see things differently because people at
their worst day and we get screamed at for getting
a ticket, for someone getting a ticket.
We get yelled at because the road is blocked
(10:00):
because of an accident and they're late on something.
It's never about, hey, is everybody okay?
I have things I have to do and you're in my way.
It's the death of somebody that
is either unexplained or unexpected.
It never should have happened.
Freak accidents that there's no reason for a lot of
(10:26):
this stuff, there's no explanation as to why it happens,
but we always ask that question as to why.
What could possibly motivate someone
to do this crazy stuff?
And a lot of times there's no answers.
And then when you try to find a counsellor that
help you process that, they have no answers for you.
That's what you're looking for.
(10:46):
And it's not necessarily that you're looking for
the answers, it's that we're looking for, I
guess, recognition and validation of our feelings.
Because paramedical organisations are taught to
be tough, show no weakness.
You're only as strong as your weakest link.
(11:07):
If you have a mental health
issue, then I can't trust you.
Trust comes into it, level of
confidence from your coworkers goes down.
You can even classify bullying, shaming in
part of that because of all the
(11:29):
stigmas that are associated with paramilitary organisation.
And so when I started going through these different
the art journaling, the tattooing, I started with Reiki
and found out that I enjoyed it.
I actually have a natural knack for it
and it was something that I didn't think
(11:52):
was actually working because it wasn't tangible.
And then I realised it was because I felt better afterwards,
I had more energy and then I wanted to share with
everybody and everybody that I work is first who I focused
on and these guys I don't understand what Renegy is, it's
(12:16):
just too weird because I can't touch it.
To me, it doesn't exist.
They cannot be linked to massage therapy
more than they can to reiki.
Just because you can't see it or touch
it doesn't mean it doesn't work or exist.
So I would experiment on them, I
would use them as my guinea pig.
Let me give you a reiki session
(12:37):
and see how you feel afterwards.
Just keep an open mind on it.
And when I did that, they actually
felt better and they couldn't understand why.
And it's just that shift in energy is just because we
can't see it or feel it doesn't mean it's not there.
It doesn't have an impact on it.
(12:58):
It does, it has a huge impact on we have energy
all around us from everything that we own has energy.
Whether it's good or bad, that's totally up to what
you transmit out to it, because if it's positive energy,
you're going to get a good feeling about it.
(13:19):
If it's a bad energy or if you instantly
don't like a person or you feel on guard
with them, well, there's a reason why they have
that negative energy and it's always on the spot.
You cannot argue with that because there's
nothing guarding it or controlling it, basically.
(13:40):
And so what I found working with the
Reiki and with sound therapy, breath work, integrating
that into my programme for my clients has
made a huge difference on them accepting what
(14:02):
they're working, they're able to actually work.
Do the breath work and the open mindedness,
the flow from a third person perspective better
because they can distance themselves and still feel
safe and still have that outlook of I
(14:24):
can see it from a different perspective.
One, because I'm older, more mature, and second, because
nothing can hurt me, I'm just the observer.
And when you tell people that they're just
the observer in an observation mode, they don't
feel threatened because they're not physically reliving.
(14:45):
Yeah, absolutely.
That's what a lot of the trauma is.
And it's hard for people to say that I can't
heal from trauma because they presume to think that.
And a lot of practitioners put them into a
(15:09):
state where they have to relive that trauma.
And that is the hardest thing for especially a perfect
spawn, because it's like living in a nightmare and you're
the hamster on that wheel, you're just spinning around, you're
not going anywhere, you're not doing thing, you start to
(15:31):
relive it over again and it doesn't stop.
And so when a lot of people will ask first
responders, well, what was your worst day on the job.
Don't say that to people.
I swear that is like a comment that really should
be outlawed because it sets off so much emotions and
(15:57):
people have actually regressed from progress, either through denial or
whatever, recovered from addiction, but people will get asked that
question and they revert right back into that old negative
way and you just lost ground.
(16:17):
Hopefully you haven't lost too much ground,
but you have to regain it.
So that makes it even more difficult.
And then they're like, well, I don't want to
try again because all I do is I relive
this and they don't want to try me.
And that's a big struggle, trying to get
that trust back for them to go through
(16:37):
it again, but to fix it this time.
And that's what I help people do.
That's really amazing.
I'm really interesting listening to your
story and how you're helping people.
And for me, it's very aligning
with how I am helping people.
(16:59):
Because I don't believe that we
need to release our trauma.
We just need to recover from it.
We just need to release that energy, release that
all the emotions, all that what we hold in.
And I can understand how first condors are so
used to just hold it all in and just
like it's going on them as the slate.
When people are acting, as you describe, beautifully, like
(17:22):
not what we would actually expect, like that they
are helpful, but often they are even under attack.
So that's great.
So tell me, what do you see as this most
common, I would say like manifestation, how you would see
that people, how the people could recognise that they struggle.
(17:43):
What do you tell people?
What they should look for symptoms to recognise as
somebody who is first responder or in military or
that struggling, that they just kind of trying to
cover it up a lot of times.
And I've actually done a couple of podcasts on PTSD
(18:08):
and understanding the complexities of it, what causes it.
We all have triggers, behaviours change, recognising
the signs is the hardest part.
It's not really the hardest part.
That's actually easy because I've talked to law
(18:29):
enforcement officers who have Hobies, did all, had
all these great friends, did a lot of
things, was active out in the community and
suddenly they're losing interest in their Hobies.
They haven't done fly fishing or in a long time.
They can't remember the last time they made one.
(18:49):
They know that when they come home, they plop
in the armchair and in front of the TV
and oh, now is what they call it.
They know that they have these
it's more like lapses of interest.
They know that when they go out at the end
(19:11):
of a shift, a lot of firefighters, the first place
they hit is they hit the bar and they hit
the bar with their coworkers because that's like their family.
That basically is the family they go out and they
socialise with the family to decompress and they know that,
(19:33):
yeah, I drink after my shift to relax because when
I go home, I have nothing but chaos at home.
I really struggle with that mindset from first responders
because I have a friend who blessed his heart.
(19:54):
He started out as a medic, went to firefighting, and due
to injuries, he's now a driver for a battalion chief.
So he's like my classic example of someone
that I fully disagree with on how he's
dealing with it is that the social drinker,
he hangs out with his buddies after work.
(20:14):
He hangs out with his buddies on
his day off and they drink.
They go out and do things because when he comes home,
he says it's nothing but a craft storm at home.
The wife is pissed off, the kids doing their
own thing, the kids are old enough to where
they don't need to be watched 24/7.
But he comes home to a family
(20:35):
dynamic of tail or what he considers.
Now part of that is he dissociates himself from that
by going the basement and hiding, or he does all
the housework because the house is a total disaster.
When he's been off and on duty for four days
(20:55):
straight, he works two days and then he works two
nights and then sometimes he pulls a double in there.
So when he comes home after four days, the house
is in chaos and he's got four days off.
Well, he's the type of personality that
he wants to like a messy place.
So he goes on this cleaning and then
(21:17):
the entire time that he's cleaning, he's pissed
off, so he goes out and grooms afterwards.
So it's a vicious cycle of true, there's chaos at
home, but if the family dynamic feels that they're not
being integrated or involved in that first responder's life, there
(21:41):
is going to be what seems like chaos because they
don't know how to relate to this person.
And granted, there are some spouses out there and
significant others out there that are very non supportive
and all they want is the paycheck coming in.
But a lot of times, and I've gotten this
from family members, when they come home, they take
(22:05):
off that uniform, but they're still a cop or
they're still an Em, they're still in that zone.
They can't turn it off and we can't.
We don't work a nine to five job Monday through Friday or
five days a week where we punch in and punch out and
we can leave the stress at work and go home.
(22:25):
And it doesn't work that way
for first responders and military.
We're on call pretty much 24/7.
So we can't just flip that switch and think that
the drive from work to home is going to decompress
us with some relaxing music and we're good to go.
For the family dynamic thing and the busy schedules
(22:48):
that are at home, it doesn't work like that.
We have to have that solitude.
But unfortunately that solitude can get us into a bind as
well because we start to enjoy it too much and we
don't want to socialise outside of work, we don't want to
hang out with the neighbours because they're annoying.
(23:09):
We don't want a people anymore.
And it's frustrating because you lose interest in your
Hobies, your favourite weekend activities because you're on a
rotating schedule or shift your body gets mixed up
with all the different changes like that and so
(23:32):
therefore mentally and emotionally you can't catch up.
You're always playing that catch up game
and you never catch up to what
the physical demands are asking of you.
And so what I found is that working with people
(23:54):
and finding out their Hobies and their interests of what
they like to do, what their interests are I try
to integrate something of that into their programme.
That customised for them because that way it sparks the
interest back into what they used to like to do.
(24:16):
It's going to help them open up more
to feel safe because it's always been a
great activity, it's always been a relaxing activity.
It's something that they can relate good memories to.
And once you have that relation of good memories and
positivity, it opens them up to where they're more able
(24:37):
to want to work on the bad stuff.
Because they want those good memories
to start coming in more often.
Because it's that endorphin of good feelings.
And they miss that once they get a
taste of that endorphin of good endorphins, they
want more without the synthetic, I guess.
(25:02):
The synthetic resources.
But the tough part is getting them to acknowledge that
yeah, it's okay to like your hobbies, it's okay to
have Hobies, it's okay to open up and that's the
biggest part is getting them to feel safe enough.
Open up.
(25:22):
So what would be your advice to
for example families if one of the
members is in this first responder services?
How the family can better accommodate or what
(25:43):
is some useful advice you're giving your clients?
Like how to unload it, how to get it
to that routine of keeping that mental health fine
and how the family can support them.
One thing I've learned with family dynamics
is they need their own support group.
(26:04):
They need to be able to vent their frustrations
out in that support group where they're not venting
it out on their first responder family member.
Because the intention may be that we're caring and
that they want to help and they want to
listen but the way they come across can be
(26:30):
sometimes accusatory or argumentative or basically aggressive.
We get enough of that on the job.
We can't hand we want to switch off in
order for us to be able to do that.
(26:51):
Sometimes it's easier to have the family members and
the significant others have their own support group where
they can learn those tricks of the trade.
If dad's a cop, he's not going to want to listen
to a bunch of loud songs when he comes home.
Granted, the family doesn't have to walk on old shelf,
(27:14):
but let him have his hour of peace and maybe
set up a schedule with that first responder of okay,
you know what, I know you've had a rough day.
I know you don't.
They don't want to bring the job home with them.
They don't want to talk about their
bad days, which I can understand.
Sometimes though, you got to let them and
(27:35):
the first responder has to then letting them
in on what kind of day you've had
opens that communication of understanding too.
Because shutting out the family members that are
not first responders or military and it's almost
(27:56):
kind of like an identity thing because they
feel like they're not important to be included.
Part of a relationship is even in the marriage
vows it says for better or for worse.
Okay, you don't want to share your worst day with me.
Well that's part of that marriage vow.
That's part of standing by your partner.
(28:17):
That's part of even if you're living with
someone, that's part of that relationship 100%.
Let me carry that extra weight for you until you are
100% so that we can do this together at 100%.
It's not a 50 50 thing.
Relationships never are.
(28:39):
Even with your own children.
It's not a 50 50 thing.
It's 100% from both people, from everybody.
If someone can't carry that load of 100% and sometimes
you need someone else to help you let them.
But it's a communication where sometimes
(28:59):
it's a family counselling thing.
If it involves family dynamics of maybe setting together, shutting
down with them and saying, okay, let's work out a
plan of how do we communicate and work together.
Cohesively without one person either feeling left out or one
(29:20):
person feeling like they're being put through the interrogation room,
but at the same time they're given their space because
we need that after a long day.
I know after a long twelve
hour shift, I'm done peopleing.
I actually come home, I don't want to talk to anybody.
I'm cranky, I'm irritated and I
(29:42):
just want some peace and quiet.
Which is ironic because you may have a peaceful
day at work, but it's still mentally, you need
to be controlled and have that silence.
One thing that I have suggested for first responders is
when they come home, go take a shower, go take
(30:03):
a hot shower and imagine that shower washing away all
that negativity from your job, from your day, from whatever.
And imagine the water just washing it
away and shoving it down that drain.
And once you kind of mentally picture all the
(30:25):
crap going down the drain, it may take about
20 minutes, feel better, and I've done it myself.
I get stressed out, I get cranky, I snap
at my roommate, I go take a shower.
20 minutes later, I'm in a better frame of all that
stress has worked down the drain is how I picture it.
(30:47):
And it should be a requirement.
You don't talk to people first as long as for
at least an hour when they get home, let them
go take a shower, chill out in the shower, let
them lay down, get off their feet.
They've probably been on their feet all day.
And then say, hey, you know what?
How was your day?
Start off a general conversation.
(31:10):
Include them in activities.
And that's also part of it, is
that families shouldn't have to put their
lives on hold for their first responder. Yeah.
And a lot of them don't.
But a lot of them sometimes also have hard times,
including them back into those Family Dynamics Together group because
(31:33):
they're so used to their family members being gone, they
forget that, oh, wow, it's your day off. I forgot.
My bad.
So it's an awareness.
It's communication.
It's a lot of different things that we
assume and kind of take for granted because
we get so much into a routine that
(31:56):
we forget about things that pop up unexpectedly.
Having a support group for the spouses, their
family members, and one for the first responders,
and then one together as a group or
as, like, coming together as a family.
Just having that almost like a
(32:18):
strategy session when you come together.
Not a venting session, just a strategy session
of how can we make this work?
Because first responders and military seem to have the
highest amount of divorces no, I can imagine. Yeah.
And abusive relationships.
So it's like, okay, well, now that we've identified two issues
(32:42):
of problems, let's get down to the root cause of it
and try to find a workable solution that everybody comes out
a winner on this and nobody's left out.
There's no blame game going on, and if
we can't mess together like that mudball, okay,
then I guess you call it quit.
(33:03):
But we haven't tried every dynamic
before we've called it quit.
I think too many people are quick to
end it before trying to work things out.
Like back in the 50s, my
grandparents, bless their hearts, they disagreed.
They had the separate web type thing from the if.
(33:27):
They argued, they argued privately, but they worked it
out, and they stayed together through thick and thin.
And my father was back for me.
He had his own issues from that, and my grandmother put
up with a lot from him, but she wasn't willing to
(33:50):
walk away from him because he was an idiot.
He stuck by him until he died, and she
swore she'd never get married after that, though.
And then three years later, she suddenly got married.
He was the love of her life.
It was the second romance, and
(34:12):
he treated her like the queen.
And when they actually passed away from Alzheimer's and she
died a week later, from a broken, broken heart.
It was like, wow, things like this can happen.
This is how marriages are supposed to be.
Instead of we have a little bit
of rough water here and okay, we're
(34:32):
done, see you later, there's other solutions.
I see that it really can sometimes hard to find the
balance and I see it from how you describe it.
It's about that find that balance.
Because I work a lot of with, I would say
the children of the first responders now, adults, of course,
(34:54):
but from military families, for example, and they were so
severely affected by trauma responses of their fathers or mothers,
by the lack of their presence, by that priorities always
on them, never on me.
There is never time.
When they came up, they just snapping, they
(35:15):
never came to my game, never show attention.
Always I am always something like hunger on
the priority because what are they doing?
It's more important than my life.
So I kind of see it a lot from other perspectives.
So this is so interesting because I
believe that it's about healing all families.
(35:39):
Everybody have their own trauma or own things to
deal with and especially in this, the roles are
important, but on other side, as you said, they
shouldn't become excuse for treating the family in the
way that family is not important.
So it's finding about defining the balance
(36:00):
and finding the space for each.
And communication is definitely key.
So if somebody wants to work with you, it's a first
responder or know somebody, or it's maybe family member and would
be interested to know how can we help somebody, how long
(36:21):
your programme takes or what they could expect and how they
will find you, how they can contact you.
Well, first of all, all
my programmes were customizable.
My shortest programme, let's see, it was one month.
I did two sessions with a veteran on going
(36:45):
back through his childhood traumas and mentally giving him
his younger self a safe haven and actually worked
through his promise on his own.
We had the initial consultation, which
is 20 minutes, and it's free.
(37:07):
And then he worked with me twice
and picked the guided meditation up immediately.
Knew exactly how to focus it, how to work through it,
because once he was told that he's in a safe place,
he's just watching this past trauma as an observer.
(37:31):
It clicked with him that oh,
okay, so I'm not reliving this.
I'm just watching it like a movie.
And then I worked with him on taking steps, talk
to his younger self and finding that safe haven.
Because as children, we always look for someone to
(37:53):
be our safe haven, to take us to safety,
to be there for us to have our back.
And if that person is not available, where do we go?
And a lot of times that's when we
tend to hide in closets, hide under the
bed, run to the friend's house trying.
To find that sanctuary place.
(38:15):
And so what I did is I worked with him
on finding a way to have a conversation with his
younger self on what the problem was, who his safe
person was, why were they not available.
And then he take it upon his adult self
(38:35):
to take that child to a safe place.
So he was kind of working kind of like in a
time warp of I'm going to help at this point.
And that's why he went into the military
was because of a lot of childhood problems,
because he never felt safe at home.
And that's why a lot of children go into the military
(38:59):
at a young age, is that they have a sucky childhood.
No one has a perfect childhood, I've noticed that.
And if they say they do, that's their perception.
But a lot of the military personnel are children
who have been deeply traumatised and they're trying to
(39:20):
find a connection to something and stability.
The military offers that.
It's just that regiment of orders.
You have breakfast at this time, you have PT
at this time, you have inspection at this time.
So it's a routine that's constant and consistent
because it may not have been something they
ever had and that's what they're looking for.
(39:42):
But then when they become a civilian, they're lost
again because no one's telling them what to do. Exactly.
They can't get out of that military mindset, but they
don't understand how to integrate with regular people either because
all they've dealt with is parents telling them what to
do, the military telling them what to do, and now
(40:03):
they have to think on their own. Oh, my God.
What am I doing? They're lost.
They're totally lost.
They have an identity cris, basically.
So taking him back there, he actually worked through all
of his childhood trauma, clear up into his adulthood.
And we had a follow up at the end of the
30 days and he was off and running, set to go.
(40:26):
I worked with him on a couple of relationship
things and honestly he's doing good because I haven't
heard best results isn't when I have a client.
When I work with clients, I don't want them long term.
(40:51):
Client has been two years.
It actually took two years to finally get her
to feel safe enough to go back to her,
not her childhood trauma, but to an adult trauma
that she faced that actually caused her anxiety, that
caused her to lose her job as an EMP.
So it took her two years to finally open up
(41:13):
to me about that situation enough to where I could
kind of piece together what was going on.
And this is talking to this woman once every
two weeks, about 3 hours at a time.
That's how long it took.
Okay, so I was able to piece enough of the past,
(41:34):
of her issue without actually going into names or details.
And I walked through a session of taking her back
to that moment and watching it as an observer.
We actually had to do it into two segments
because she started getting a panic attack from it.
And so we took about a three week break and
(41:57):
then we went back and we did it again and
this time she got through the whole thing.
She was feeling a little anxious afterwards and
I gave her just some thoughts and affirmations
to ponder on in music to listen to.
And without realising it had clicked with her enough
(42:21):
that about a month or so later, she went
back to Maine for a family visit, went through
that town, didn't have a problem, was visiting with
her family, and they actually had a conversation about
that incident that her family knew nothing about.
And then she realised that she had not only
(42:42):
told them everything about this incident that had caused
her so much trauma, but she was not having
an anxiety attack from it, from talking about it,
and she was like she was floored.
Now I hear from her about once every other month
just as a cheque in to see how she's doing.
(43:03):
And I'm like, well, it took two years, but that
was at her because of her anxiety and her stressors
and the crush and a lot of things.
So most of my programmes are very short.
I'm not like most therapists, I don't
(43:24):
want to see patients for years.
No, I'm saying I believe that we're supposed to
make them better and be happy that they're living.
So my programmes are usually
between three months to six.
But if somebody have really severe symptoms,
(43:45):
my longest one is a year.
And that's only because it's PTSD.
And it's literally a twelve step programme where each
month on something new to get them to that
point of saying okay, I've actually worked through my
PTSD because that is a little bit more different.
(44:07):
Because not only are there more triggers, a lot of
the triggers happen in adulthood and the issues happen in
adulthood, so therefore they have to process them or they
have to process less, but at the same time process
more of what they haven't been processing.
(44:29):
So you have to rewire their thinking.
So that takes a little bit more in depth.
But that is my longest programme.
But most of my programmes are 30 days.
Because it's not to sound crap,
but it's like a no brainer.
(44:50):
Once you find the root of the problem or the root of
the issue, then it's easy to figure out how to fix it.
It's not us fixing it, it's them
fixing it that is the challenge sometimes.
Because they're there because I don't know what to do.
(45:11):
Okay, well, here's the step.
I don't want to do that.
Okay, you got to work with me on this.
I can't fix them, I can't heal them.
They can only heal themselves and we can give
them the tools and that's the biggest thing is
getting their confidence up enough in themselves so that
(45:33):
they know that they can heal themselves.
We're just guiding them to find the right
direction that's going to work for them, basically.
And it's a trust issue in themselves,
more so than in that's great.
So how people can contact you if they will want to
(45:55):
question if you would work with them or if they have
questions if they will be right fit for the best place
to schedule a free consultation is on Healacheal Me.
And you can look me
up under Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
I'm the only first responder
(46:16):
wellness life coach on there.
But you have to put in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as
the location for me to possibly you can schedule
the free 20 minutes consultation there for free.
And then basically it's almost like a little interview,
informal interview type thing to see if we're going
(46:38):
to be a good fit or not.
Some of them, it's not going to work.
And then I'm on Facebook with internal consciousness.
I'm also on Instagram, Twitter and
LinkedIn, always the same name.
Internal consciousness on Twitter is EMS Fitness three two
(46:59):
three is where that one is located at.
And my Facebook has my website and my
email as well as my phone number.
They can always contact me through any of those venues.
My web page is http
(47:20):
internal I-N-T-E-R-N-A lconsciousness UENI web.
That's amazing.
I will put also to the description of episode,
the ways how people can contact you if they
listen to us and would like to contact you.
(47:40):
So thank you very much for coming to
our podcast way out of childhood trauma.
I think that it was so amazing to hear from
point of view of people who are very to some
level, sometimes more sown as the causes of trauma of
others, for example, in childhood trauma when he's speaking.
(48:04):
So it was really amazing to see it from
the point of view of first responder and what
families can do, that balance can be found and
that they can be helped to cope with that.
And we're doing these very important jobs we're doing.
If it's the protecting, if it's the MNT
(48:26):
is so important, is it like we need
ambulances going around and saving people?
I'm grateful because I had the car accident and without Mt
coming to the place, I would not be here today.
So I see it as very important role and it's
(48:47):
great that it's now available support specifically for these roles
and I hope that more people will take up this.
Your message will spread and
more people will realise that.
They don't have to suffer by themselves, that they
don't have to keep it all in and carry
(49:09):
on until they break down, but that they can
have balanced life also, even when they're doing this
very demanding but very important job.
Thank you for having me.
That's my biggest thing is we
(49:29):
don't have to suffer alone.
And trying to get rid of the stigmas
is the biggest goal, because those stigmas about
our mental health and wellness worms are detrimental
to everyone's health, because if you don't have
mentally well and emotionally well, first responders, they
(49:52):
can't be out there helping other people.
And the stigmas about mental health, is it sickness
or anything like that, it needs to be erased.
Absolutely agree. Yeah.
Why we are here.
So thank you very much for
coming, and have a beautiful day.
Bye. All right. Thank you. Good luck. Bye.
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